1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing and, in particular, to autonomic computing. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program product for implementing an automation computing evaluation scale to generate recommendations.
2. Description of Related Art
An on-demand business is an enterprise whose business processes, when integrated end-to-end across the company with key partners, suppliers, and customers, can respond with speed to any customer, market opportunity, or external threat. When an enterprise endeavors to be on-demand ready, it is a goal to increase its sophistication of automation by embedding autonomic capabilities and technologies. An enterprise's autonomic capability may range from basic, where analysis and problem solving are performed manually, to autonomic, where computer systems and networks may configure themselves to changing conditions, for example, and are self-healing in the event of failure with minimal human intervention.
Autonomic computing can help to overcome the barrier of infrastructure complexity. The core benefits of autonomic computing are improved resiliency, ability to deploy new capabilities more rapidly and increased return from IT investments. In a rapidly changing market, the ability to react quickly is a competitive advantage. Bottom line, advanced automation through utilizing autonomic technology allows companies to focus on business, not on infrastructure. Therefore, it may be a goal of an on-demand business to improve its levels of automation by incorporating autonomic computing technologies.
It is also a goal of a company providing automated computing technology and services to assess the autonomic computing capabilities of customers. There are white papers on autonomic computing problem determination and definitions for what an autonomic computing system does. However, there are no clear benchmarks that enable such an assessment and no tools exist for determining recommendations that may allow customers to become more automation computing capable.